


Name Calling

by aban_asaara



Series: Month of Fanfiction 2017 [4]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Hate Sex, M/M, Smut, or more specifically hate blow job, something something lyrium Justice whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2019-10-05 01:41:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17315681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Neither of them go by their real names, but at least Anders knowshis.





	Name Calling

**Author's Note:**

> Month of Fanfiction - Day 4 - Something you don’t ship. This was a really fun writing challenge, and I gave it my all. I hope someone enjoys it!

“Anders, you—are from the Anderfels?”

Some hesitation smoothes out the sharp edges of his voice, as if Fenris wasn’t sure how to address him without coating the words in venom first. He must be bored out of his mind to even ask. Not that Anders can blame him, really. The Wounded Coast is so dull that even he has been hoping for raiders or Tal-Vashoth for a while now.

He bites down the first reply that comes to him. “My father was, but I was born in Ferelden. Name stuck, though,” he adds with a shrug.

“What is your real name, then?”

He sighs. “‘Anders’ works just fine. Makes it as real as any other name, if you ask me.”

Fenris _hmm_ s. For a time they walk in silence along the coastline, following the footsteps left by Hawke and Isabela as they trudge through the sand further up the path. “Endrik?” Fenris says suddenly.

Anders blinks at him. “I’m sorry?”

“Wilhelm, perhaps?” he continues with a smirk, and only then does Anders realise that this is what passes for humour to the elf. “Baldewin?”

Hawke throws them a grin from above her shoulder. “Fenris, I expected better from you than calling Anders names,” she says, rousing a guffaw out of Isabela.

“Think I’ve heard that tale before,” the Rivaini quips. “Did you promise Anders your firstborn or something?”

Fenris laughs under his breath. “Ludewig?”

Anders knows he should play along—it’s harmless, really, and for once Fenris isn’t _trying_ to get under his skin, yet it pokes at some near-forgotten ache deep inside him all the same. He doesn’t want to think of the name his mother gave him, of the last time he’s been called anything other than “the Anders,” of the farm in the Fereldan countryside and the smell of fresh-baked bread and sky-high flames rising from the barn roof—

The words are out of his mouth before he’s even _thought_ them. “Tell me _your_ real name, and I’ll tell you mine.”

That shuts him up, alright. The elf bristles, something like hurt flitting across his eyes before they turn hard as flint. Then he snaps his head back toward the crags clawing their way up in the distance and walks off on his own, Hawke on his heels.

Anders watches as Fenris swats away the concerned hand she rests on his shoulder. Isabela turns to look at him and sighs his name. Even Justice rumbles in disapproval somewhere inside him. _Petty and cruel_ , the spirit declares.

 _Shut it, Justice_ , Anders replies.

* * *

Past the Maker-awful foyer, full of rotted wood and mushrooms and stagnant puddles of rainwater, the mansion isn’t as bad as Anders expected. For all the fun the others poke at Fenris for it, the room that he’s claimed as his bedchamber is warm and lived-in, sparsely furnished but comfortable. Anders recognises Hawke’s touch in the potted herbs on the windowsill; Isabela’s in the erotic deck of cards on the table.

It’s worlds better than Darktown, in any event.

Fenris snaps his book shut when he spots him and puts it away almost self-consciously. “What do you _want_ , mage?”

“If I tell you my real name,” Anders starts, unable to help himself, “will you actually use it or will you just keep calling me ‘mage’ and ‘abomination’?”

“I asked you a question,” Fenris says, his voice low and dark.

Anders has cast multi-layered spells that took less effort than getting the answer out. “I’ve come to apologise,” he manages through the clench of his jaw. “For what I said on the Wounded Coast.”

Fenris stares at him for a moment, eyes opaque. “Only for that?”

He scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘only for that’? Isn’t that enough?”

“How about the times you called me a wild dog and a beast?” he spits back as he rises to his feet, squaring his shoulders like a dog would raise its hackles. “How about that one time you said I should have killed myself?”

“I never said—I didn’t _mean_ —for the Maker’s sake, you are _insufferable_.” Anders throws his hands up and drops them back to his sides. “Fine, I take it back. Don’t know why I thought I’d bother apologising to you, anyway, considering not even Hawke would put up with you if she didn’t hope to—”

He stops himself, but it’s too late. Two strides and Fenris is across the room, fisting his hands into the fabric of Anders’s shirt. He slams him back against the table and pins him down into place, his face only inches from his. He’s _glowing_ , the lyrium brands coming alive to limn his brown skin with swathes of soft blue light. “Whatever you have to say to me, mage, leave her out of it.”

Anders opens his mouth to answer, but all words are lost to him now. The Veil billows around Fenris while the touch of the Fade skitters across his skin like a lover’s playful hands. Justice stirs awake, some enduring yen at last fulfilled, the sense of coming home like curtains opening onto afternoon sunlight. The lyrium hums along his body like a shudder, fingers of heat seeping into the marrow of his bones, running up his arms to his scalp and the tip of his toes, crackling under his skin and setting his very blood alight.

He’s felt the Veil flutter around him before when Fenris flashed past him in battle, rustling along his skin and stirring the magic underneath; “that tickles!” Merrill squealed when she felt it for the first time.

But _this_ close—

 _Eternity_ is at his fingertips. All at once Anders remembers the taste of a handful of blackberries he stole from a neighbour’s yard, the warmth of Karl’s lips against his for the first time, the swell of pride and relief whenever he saves a patient’s life, the moonlight splashing through the bars of Kinloch Hold, the purr of a kitten in his ear and the soft wool of a knitted scarf around his neck.

Here at least, in that small space between their bodies, the world is sundered no longer.

He’s hard, instantly.

Fenris’s lips part with a sharp inhale. The glow ebbs back away, and Anders hears himself _whimper_ in protest when the Fade recedes with it.

He doesn’t know what possesses him (doesn’t seem like Justice’s style) to tug the elf down and crash his mouth onto his own. _Inexplicably_ , Fenris doesn’t kill him—though he doesn’t kiss him back either, so much as he fights him for dominance. He’s all roughness and teeth, working his mouth raw while he keeps him pinned down to the table. It’s exactly how he’d imagined kissing Fenris would be like—about as tender as necking with the spikes on his armour would be—but he hadn’t imagined he’d enjoy the elf’s laughable attempt to fuck his mouth with his tongue. Anders twists his fingers into the fabric of his shirt to pull him down against himself and feel the heave of his chest against his own, the maddening sensation of his cock stiffening through his trousers as he bucks up against him with a grunt.

Before he even knows it, Anders is on his knees, tugging at the laces of Fenris’s trousers. The table wobbles as Fenris clings to the lip with both hands, and watches from under silver strands of hair as Anders pulls him free. Even his _cock_ is beautiful, the hard length two shades darker than the rest of him, arousal already dewing the tip of its well-shaped head. Anders takes him whole in his mouth, his own erection twitching at the hiss that escapes Fenris. He struggles to pull himself free with one hand wrapped around the base of Fenris’s cock, then moans around it when his own finally springs to freedom.

Then he starts sucking in earnest. Lips closed tight around him, he bobs his head while he pumps himself hard with one hand, imagines Fenris touching him instead with those slender, lyrium-lined hands of his. Anders glances up, catches a glimmer of green between half-lidded eyes beyond the rise and fall of his chest. Fenris is still clutching the edge of the table, keeping very still even as Anders runs his mouth up and down his cock as fast and hard as he can, his hand now slick with saliva as he keeps it wrapped tightly around the base.

The elf comes without warning. He spills himself into his mouth with a deep groan that rumbles from the back of Anders’s throat down to the very tip of his erection. The hot flood of his seed fills his mouth, smooth and silky and _sweeter_ than it has any right to be, and Maker but he’d forgotten how _fucking good_ elven men taste—

Anders is still coming into the palm of his own hand when Fenris tugs himself free, shoves his still-hard cock back into his trousers, and fumbles with the laces.

“Get _out_ ,” he snarls.

Anders doesn’t have to be asked twice.

* * *

It’s only years later, when Hawke stumbles into his clinic with the sort of hemorrhaging wounds that can only be inflicted by blood magic, that Anders remembers why he’s ever stepped foot into Fenris’s mansion.

(Of course, he thinks of _what_ happened there, again and often—usually at night, one hand wrapped around his cock while he conjures the taste of red wine on Fenris’s tongue, the sight of stubble burn around kiss-swollen lips, the roughness of his touch, the hot, hard length of him, that _sound_ he made when he came inside his mouth.)

Anders never finds out what happened exactly in the Hanged Man that day. “Fenris,” Hawke says, pain stretching her voice thin, then something about his master and his sister and his real name. Anders is certain that Fenris wouldn’t have wanted him to hear any of it had he not been off licking his own wounds.

But he can’t _not_ ask. “Why not use your real name now that you know it?”

Fenris doesn’t even grace him with a glance. The spearhead-shaped spruces sway in the wind that rolls over Sundermount, high above them. “Why not use yours, _Anders_?”

It’s the obvious answer, yet it startles him, like he’s just caught a glimpse of his own reflection in a mirror mistaken for a wall. Not too long ago he would’ve taken the bait and argued, but they’ve been arguing for seven years and Fenris hasn’t budged. Anders used to believe that changing minds one at a time would make a difference—but now he knows better. Sometimes change has to be forced.

He’s tired of arguing, anyway, and since whatever he says will hardly matter, he opts for the truth. “I was twelve when I was taken to the Circle in irons. ‘Anders’ is what the other apprentices called me because I was too terrified to even speak.”

“Evidently that has changed.”

Anders snorts despite himself. Since when is _Fenris_ funny? “Well, yes. But then at what point do you go, ‘by the way, guys, here’s my real name’? And why give them my real name? Why not _any_ name? It’s not like it would’ve changed anything. It’s not like I would’ve suddenly belonged or like the Templars would have treated me like anything other than a shitstain on the heel of Thedas.” He gives a shrug. “So, ‘Anders’ it is.”

For a time it’s just the rustle of the wind through the pines, the burble of a nearby creek, the muffled voices of the Dalish. “I—understand,” Fenris replies after a moment. “I thought knowing my name would’ve brought a sense of belonging, but I was wrong. ‘Fenris’ serves as well as any other name.”

Anders looks at him. He thinks of the sister who betrayed him, the grief of what may have been, the pain of hope shattered; he thinks of his own father, who was quick enough to give him up to the Circle, the sinking realisation that he had nowhere to go back to, the unbearable loneliness of being an orphan whose parents yet live.

Had he walked a different path, maybe—

Hawke and Merrill return from Master Ilen’s stall, their arms full of elfroot and runes and a new pair of supple leather boots. Fenris goes to catch a glass vial that hangs precariously from Hawke’s fingertips and stores it into his belt.

Anders tucks the thought away in the same dusty nook of his heart where his real name lies forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/)!


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